KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Hundreds of electric company customers throughout the metro have been without power since Friday morning and for some it’s not just an inconvenience, but rather a matter of life and death.
There are more than 500 customers without power in KCK according to the Board of Public Utilities. People in one area neighborhood say they had to throw the food from their refrigerators away because it had started to rot.
But, if you rely on an oxygen machine like one Kansas City, Kansas man does, losing power could cost you your life.
“It started to get hot in the house and I couldn’t breathe,” said 74-year-old Theodore Bradley, who says his power went out Friday at around 1:30 a.m.
Bradley says he’s battling lung cancer and relies on an oxygen machines to help him breathe.
“I called my daughters and told them and they said ‘daddy you cannot sit in that hot house because you’ll be dead in the morning,’” Bradley recalled.
Bradley says for the past four days he has stayed with one of his daughters and he says they’ve called the Board of Public Utilities to report the outage, but despite their efforts the power was still out by midday Monday.
Pam Gibbs says her father’s reliance on power to pump his machines, has him on the priority list with BPU.
“I have been watching people come all around the city to turn other people’s power on, we have still been calling and they haven’t come to turn daddy’s power on as yet,” said Gibbs.
She says during previous outages her father’s power was restored within 24 hours.
“If he didn’t have someplace to go, daddy would not be with us,” she said.
Gibbs says without power everything in her father’s refrigerator has to be thrown out because it’s spoiled.
A spokesperson for BPU says he couldn’t confirm if Bradley is on the priority list; however he says anyone who relies on power for their medical needs should let their utility company know.
